Echelon-5 didn't sleep, and neither did the Den. It murmured through its cables, its recycled air humming with faint static. Somewhere above, the storm gutters rattled — the sound of a city dreaming in rust.
Stitch wandered the lower hall, the floor creaking beneath his boots. The Den was nothing like he'd imagined. Not a lair, not a hideout — more like a breathing machine, an organism grown from scavenged tech and stubborn will.
He passed rooms lit by broken neon tubes: one filled with drone parts, another stacked with data cores flickering like captured ghosts. A smell of solder and dust hung in the air.
He found Kirin first, crouched over a dismantled visor rig.
The engineer didn't look up.
"You move too loud," Kirin said, voice filtered through the static of a voice-mod chip.
"Didn't know there was a right way to walk," Stitch muttered.
"There's a right way to exist here," Kirin replied. "Every sound is a signal. Every step is traceable. We erase our noise."
Stitch paused, then nodded — quieter this time.
Kirin tilted her mirrored eyes up. "You learn fast. That's useful. Just don't think it makes you safe."
Then she went back to her work, the glow of the tools painting silver ripples across his face.
⸻
Further in, a girl with blue-dyed hair sat cross-legged on the floor, tuning a pulse rifle that looked older than both of them. She had a cigarette balanced on her lip, unlit, just something to hold between her teeth.
"New stray," she said without looking up. "Name's Vale. You probably heard me talk too much in the debrief."
"Yeah," Stitch said. "You almost sounded like you liked me."
Vale laughed once — sharp, dry. "I don't like anyone. But I respect dumb luck when it survives."
He didn't know if it was an insult or a compliment. Maybe both.
She pointed at the upper levels. "You'll want to steer clear of Raze for a bit. He's still deciding whether saving you was worth breaking the chain. And for what it's worth—" she flicked the unlit cigarette into a bin "—I'd decide it wasn't."
⸻
He found Mira near the back of the Den, standing by the viewport slit — a strip of reinforced glass that looked out into the underbelly of Echelon-5. Rain shimmered down the metal outside, refracting citylight into slow, falling colors.
She didn't turn when he approached.
"They don't like me much," Stitch said.
"They don't like anyone," she replied. "That's how they survive."
He stood beside her, watching the reflected glow crawl across her face. "You didn't have to pull me in. You knew it'd cost you."
"I didn't do it for you," she said quietly. "Sometimes instinct is louder than orders."
He nodded. "You always listen to instinct?"
"Only when it hurts."
Silence filled the gap. The Den buzzed behind them, voices low, metal sighing.
Mira finally turned to him. "Come tomorrow. Raze will test you. He always does."
"What kind of test?"
"The kind you don't get to fail."
⸻
Later that night, Stitch lay awake in a narrow cot under a rusted pipe. The Den murmured all around him — whispers of broken machines, laughter from somewhere above, the rhythm of distant boots.
For the first time in years, he wasn't sleeping under rain. But he didn't feel safer. Just… tethered.
He watched the ceiling flicker with reflections from the city beyond — the pulse of Echelon-5, steady and cruel — and wondered what exactly he'd stepped into.
Outside, the storm deepened.
Inside, Ghostline dreamed in electric silence.